Hope's New Clothes

If you haven't been watching the weather, it's been unusually snowy here in Lawrence this December. My boss told me the other day that this is very close to being the the snowiest December in Lawrence ever. Since I love the snow, I don't mind this weather trend one bit. Celtic happens to love the snow as well. He'll go outside no matter how much snow is on the ground, and he loves to romp and play in the drifts. He'll stick his entire head under the snow to sniff around. After being outside in the cold weather, he'll come flying back into the house, running around like a crazy dog, acting like a puppy again. No matter how cold it is, he loves to go for walks, and if there's snow on the ground he will pull extra hard on the leash, like he's a husky practicing for his sled team. I guess he just finds the snow invigorating.

His sister, on the other hand, absolutely hates the cold weather. If it's the least bit chilly, she wants no part of being outside longer than absolutely necessary. When it's downright cold, we sometimes have to force her to go outside at all, and once she gets out there she sprints out to the yard, does her business, and sprints back to the door. Her weather "wimpiness" has made it difficult to take her on walks as of late, since during our outings she often pulls towards home before anyone else is ready to go that way!

In Hope's defense, she does have really short hair and is fairly lean, so there's not a lot on her body that can keep her warm. Since she seemed so miserable, Chad and I started shopping for a coat for her, but we didn't find very many dog coats available for a 55 pound dog. Strangely enough, we finally found a cute pink puffy coat in her size at Old Navy, of all places. We bought her a large, which looked like it was the right size for her weight, but when we got it home it was absolutely huge! We put it aside to take back at a later date, but I couldn't help but think that I needed to find something for her to wear in the meantime. I found an old sweatshirt of mine, and modified it slightly so that Hope could wear it. Needless to say, she wasn't very happy about it, although I thought she looked adorable.

Having never worn clothes before, she was pretty freaked out by the whole thing. She kept following me around the house, leaning up against my leg or making me trip over her. Celtic became obsessed with her (I guess he thought she looked pretty cute) and she was miserable, so I thought I'd make her feel better by putting a coat on Celtic too. He's had one for years, but since he doesn't mind the cold and despises the coat, we never make it him wear it. My plan worked, and as soon as Celtic's coat was on he quit obsessing over Hope and instead started feeling sorry for himself.


Hope wasn't quite as freaked out by her coat after seeing that Celtic had one too, so we took off on our walk (although we took Celtic's coat back off just before we walked out the door), and Hope got several compliments from the neighbors. She looked pretty adorable, although you could tell she wasn't entirely comfortable in her new clothes. She only had to wear it a couple of times before the weather warmed up a little and she could go on walks naked again.

So on my next trip out to the Old Navy area, I stopped by the store to exchange the gigantic coat we'd purchased there. They didn't have any mediums in pink (which is probably fine since Hope isn't really a girly-girl anyway), so I snatched up their last medium, which was white. A couple of nights ago when the temperature dropped back down into the teens, Hope got to try out her new coat for the first time. I think she looks pretty cute! :)


Of course, you can tell Hope is still pretty uncomfortable with the whole clothing thing, but how could she not grow to love this adorable puffy coat with all the cute little patches and everything? When we were out on our walk, she was still acting a little weird and was practically glued to my leg, but as soon as she was distracted by another dog or a squirrel something, she'd forget she was freaked out about her coat and start walking completely normally. Clearly it was a psychological impairment and the coat wasn't actually physically restrictive. Hopefully, our dear little girl will grow to appreciate the extra warmth on our outings into the freezing Kansas temperatures!